— You’ll see how nice it is to get out of São Paulo and leave behind the stress, the violence. A peaceful environment will help you pay more attention to yourself.
— That’s exactly what I don’t want, José, to think about myself. I’m not leaving because of the violence, but to escape the stagnation of only thinking. Violence is at least some kind of action.
José asked if he could move in after I left, so that he could take advantage of the last weeks of its ghosts, incarnate in bricks, switches, doorknobs, the change in light in between the kitchen and the living room, the echo of footfalls on the last stair, the squeak in the floorboards outside our room, which continues all the way to our parents’ room. One last, long night without mother’s kiss.
The good sort of ghosts, professor. Tortured, but good. Imagine that one day you’re walking down the street, returning from campus, tired, no, not tired, distracted, recalling things that happened throughout the day, without bothering to organize your thoughts, just letting them wash over you, leaving behind diffuse impressions, feelings, a chill, a shiver, a surprise — but at what, you can’t really say. And while lost in thought you drift past your regular bus stop and decide to get on later, so as not to interrupt the flow of memory. You stop on a corner to wait for the light. Before you realize it, it’s already changed and then switched back again. You look around to see where you are and beside you a boy signals for you to follow him. He doesn’t gesture, doesn’t say anything, but you know that he’s summoning you. You divert your eyes and the image of the boy remains. You don’t know who he is, you’re certain you’ve never seen him before. But at the same time he’s familiar — too familiar, you might say. You watch him from the corner of your eye, not wanting to meet his gaze. He’s standing there, waiting for the light to change. He’s just a normal boy, waiting for the light, he’s not looking at you but he’s still summoning. The light changes and then changes back and the two of you still stand there waiting. Who is he? A student from years ago? A friend’s son? No: you know you’ve never seen him, and yet he’s completely familiar, almost just like you. The light changes and you both cross the street, proceeding down the same sidewalk. It’s your way home. You’ve never walked this way, you always do this stretch by bus, you’ve been commuting that way for years. From up in the bus you’ve seen the houses, the pedestrians. Maybe that’s it, maybe he always walks this way at the same time you go past on the bus, and you’ve seen him from above. His gait and his clothes are both unremarkable. Why should he draw your attention to the point of recognition? Because it’s been so many years, looking and looking, and maybe he’s become fixed in your memory without you having realized it. But no, he couldn’t be more than twenty or so, and people don’t look the same way for long at that age. Now he stops and fishes in his pocket, and with a key in his hand he turns toward the twin row house. Yes, of course, the twin row house. The kind born in pairs, identical twins. The difference of a split, the division of a whole — when we speak of a part, we indicate that a whole exists, but a part has no individual existence without the whole. A twin row house, a twin, they’re individuals, they’re whole, but they carry another in their name. Yes, you’ve thought this many times while staring at the twin row house, standing there between two other buildings, I was a twin, but my brother was stillborn.
(José went out of his way to find my fury, my fate, my mark of Cain.)
If one of the houses were demolished, destroyed, the other would still remain half of a twin row house: it’s written into the architecture, its roof slopes only on one side. Its entire symmetry demands the other side, already undone. I can’t stop myself from being a twin, not a part, but an individual who carries in his structure another, nonexistent.
You thought about what never existed for us, only for you, and of what came before your time, you now remember having such thoughts at times, you were refining your thoughts, but only when you passed that stretch of the street. On the next corner there’s a pastry shop that you now regret you never tried, never remembered to skip the bus and walk to the pastry shop, get a chocolate eclair for Jussara, some meringues for mother, a donut for Lígia. This is an old memory, Ju still in medical school, mother where she always was, alive, and Lígia a little girl, playing on the floor with grandma’s rag dolls. But then another thing caught your attention. There were days when, distracted, you didn’t notice the house. Did you feel its lack? A window left open before going out can gnaw at you before you can put your finger on what’s bothering you. I think that without being able to put your finger on it, you didn’t know it was the house that you missed — even though in recent days you surprised yourself by waiting for it to appear. You fixed your attention on the difference between the two equals. Both old, something becoming to a house, both with the same door made of thick wood, blinds in the upper windows, the little verandah made of spaced red bricks, the low wall in front adorned with yellow stones, separating the little yard from the street, and the white iron gate, the same moulding on the doors and windows. But it was only when the bus got stuck in traffic that you could tell they were identical, even if each was its own.
The one of the left, where the boy was now turning his key, is reasonably well kept: no embellishments, never a new color, the paint flaking in a few places, the red bricks blackened, the garden in front showing signs of ownership. From the bus you can’t see the debris on the ground, only the roses, always in bloom. The one on the right-hand side is graffitied, the slats in the blinds are missing or bent, the gate is shut with rusted wire, the grass grows wild, and a thriving vine, perhaps a bougainvillea that doesn’t bloom, a male, has pulled shingles off the house. You always observed the one on the left. You’d noticed that it was a twin row house but your gaze never apprehended its pair, the one on the right, in spite of having perceived the harmony of the composition. What if I went to live there? No. There’s our mother, Jussara, Lígia. No. But what if I lived here in addition to there — an office, something simple, for receiving students, colleagues, a study group, a place to bring a girlfriend, a place that didn’t talk except to me, or that wouldn’t say so much about me. Oh, the pastry shop, I forgot again.
On the day of the traffic jam your thoughts apprehended the house on the right, the identity and the difference, it named them the living and the dead. Strange, the way we attribute to death this stagnation, and to life this flow. And time flowed more visibly for the dead house than the living one. In our bodies, as well. If Renato were alive,
(I would have raised an eyebrow at this point, when José switched from one death to another)
or Eliana, or our father — if our father were alive his body would be recognizable, whereas now, underground. . . .
Anyway, the boy goes inside, the door doesn’t groan the way you remember thinking it would. It frightened you not to hear it creak, it was so familiar, and you hadn’t even realized it, this familiarity you developed with the house. The door to the house on the left was on its right, near to the division with its pair. But strangely, when the boy opens the door and leaves it ajar, waiting for you to follow, you see a light coming from inside to the right, where there ought to be a dividing wall, the border. A very strong light, filtered by the opaque texture of a lampshade, reflected on dark woods and the spines of old books. Its power didn’t derive from intensity, but from revelation. You enter. The light from the right side absorbs you. You aren’t entering the house of a stranger, the light belongs to you.
No resistance or willpower or curiosity moved you, it took no effort to climb the stairs, cross the verandah, and step over the threshold of those houses. They weren’t one, but they were connected as if they were. The source of the light sucked you to the right, like a small child pulling his father by the hand, closer to the magician he fears and yet still wants to watch — and the father, rooted to the ground, continues talking to a friend, or finishes paying for cotton candy and waits for his change. Just like that you
were brought to a halt before you crossed the second threshold, with your feet already turned to the right, in the direction of the light, your body turned to the left, and you discerned in a single glance the apartment where you and Eliana had made a home together,
(where is this going, José?)
the furniture, the layout, the tonality of the air, the way it carried the sound of Eliana’s voice, the armchair where Armando would sit when he visited, the cushion he crushed under his arm, it was there, crushed,
(we didn’t have an armchair, just a chintzy sofa that ended up who knows where)
the double bed, a present from Dona Esther,
(that got sold)
and Dona Joana’s curtains in the kitchen window
(no, no, we only had an ugly, narrow ventilation window in our tiny, hot kitchen)
you’re standing there, half-turned, your feet pointed one way and your eyes glancing back, you want to move in the direction of the light but you’re waiting for something, and a murmur resonates, the memory of Eliana’s voice, not her voice, but her slow cadence, her serious tone — they’re in the air,
(I hear Eliana clearly. It doesn’t scare me when, in bed, her voice calls out to me.)
you try to understand fragments of words, meanings that might still be found in those tattered sounds that resound around the old apartment.
The light finally gets you moving, you turn toward the house on the right and step into an enormous library, long and oval, vaulted ceilings, the whole space lit by a small lamp with a shade made of human skin.
(José, please)
The lamp is small and the light looks darker inside the shade than out. The skin intensifies the light. Your myopic eyes can clearly read the spines of all the books and for some reason that doesn’t alarm you; you can even read the inside of each book you pass. All the authors that you ever read or wanted to read are there, as well as books unwritten and others long since disappeared. The words, sentences, and paragraphs that your eyes graze: together they conjure the feelings you had when you read them for the first time. The joys of discovery return to you intact. The words, which had already been transformed in you, returned to their original authors, their brothers, this family that constitutes you, each one of your bones, your nerves, the story of your skin and the movement of your guts, you hear all the words, you drift along tense threads of pleasure, your manhood getting larger, aching beneath your pants; it’s extremely hard. You ejaculate.
You open your eyes to the sound of the key turning in the lock. You’re stopped on the pavement in front of the house. The boy comes out to face the imbecile at the gate. His eyes like mulberries, organic and endless — it’s difficult to face them but you can’t avoid them, his eyes, your eyes, brother, they burn, as though you can’t blink. The boy moves toward you, crosses the verandah, descends the stairs, touches the gate, and you’re stuck there, unable to avert your gaze. The boy smiles: he has good manners for dealing with a lost old man. Good afternoon, sir, can I help you with something? His voice doesn’t have anything special to it, and when he smiles the prison of his gaze falls away. You’re free, you don’t respond, you turn and go on your way, once again forgetting to visit the pastry shop.
José — recent exchange
Look, José, I told him, you don’t need the house or the ghosts that inhabit it. Not even the ones you think belong to me. Anyway, the house is yours, and I’m not just trying to be kind or fulfill some obligation — come whenever you like. Maybe he’ll come by after the New Year. I’ll try to hurry up with my move.
Yesterday I went to the cemetery. I like old cemeteries, the chapels and mausoleums, the letters they use on the grave plaques, the epitaphs. I like the dates in particular. I lamented that Eliana wasn’t here, in São Paulo. Her name and her dates. When Lígia was little, we used to go for walks in the city cemeteries. She liked the one on Dr. Arnaldo Avenue the best. Maybe it was the row of flower stands, but I think it was mostly for its narrow little streets lined with monuments rising up the hill, like houses. Sunday is always a nice day for cemeteries: more people are out, and in general the world is much calmer. Lanes for strolling slowly, where strangers greet one another, where you can stop and be still and quiet without causing alarm. Lígia would run, spinning round and round, and play within a radius of me that she considered safe. We’d buy flowers at the entrance and she’d place them, one by one, into the little vases on the graves she liked best, like the breadcrumbs we fed to the fish in the park one Sunday. Lígia imitated the gestures of the older ladies standing before certain graves, kneeling and murmuring with her hands brought together near her mouth. My daughter had it down, the way those murmurs were like little kisses the women gave their hands: she did the same, sometimes with devotion — her eyes closed, her brow creased — other times just for fun. One day I saw her standing in front of a grave looking very serious, her posture erect, her hands clasped behind her, her head bowed low over her chest. Watching from afar, I saw that she was imitating a tall and elegant man who was meditating before a tomb. The man then threw his head back, let out a long sigh, crossed his arms over his chest, and let his gaze wander across the sky. After a while he clapped his hands together, just once, rubbed them against each other, and went on his way, amusing himself by reading the inscriptions along his path. Lígia repeated his movements and I found it funny. From then on she conducted the ritual she’d learned from the tall man for the graves she considered the most important. For the humbler ones, the ones without a chapel or a statue, she performed the old-lady routine: she would kneel, kiss her hands, and get up again as though they were steps in a dance. The tall man’s clap, which he had done only once to mark the end of a thought, became applause. Dances, kisses, claps: the homage my daughter paid to the dead. Maybe in a park I wouldn’t be able to tolerate our daughter’s levity, but on hallowed ground her laughter couldn’t wound me.
And then there were the stories. She would ask me to read the dates, the names. We’d figure out how old people were when they died and then make up their life stories. Lígia wanted me to look for children. She imagined them to be like herself and her classmates. Maybe he was playing on top of a wall and fell off? Maybe a bad wolf ate him? Or he drank tainted water from the faucet? With old people, her imagination ran along the lines of her grandmother and her grandmother’s friends, especially Dona Josefa, a neighbor whose arms were spotted, dry, and wrinkled — something Lígia always noticed. The old ones were always kindly, they gave presents to their grandchildren, told them stories, drank water slowly, but they kept getting older and older and older, so old that they couldn’t hear any longer, couldn’t see — they hunched over, turned into frogs, and died. I pointed to people who came to visit their graves and told her they were probably relatives who looked like the dead. But Lígia preferred her own versions.
One day she asked to see her mother’s grave. I explained that it was far away. But why? Because she died far away. But why can’t her grave be here? I’d told her that tombs were monuments that people make for loved ones who have died. It was a way of feeling closer to them: when we read their names and dates, we remember their lives and how nice it was to be their friend. Like a photograph, but better, because they always stay in the same place, where anybody can pass by and read the names and dates and remember nice things about them. But I hadn’t said the obvious: that their bodies are buried beneath the markers. I could sense that Lígia didn’t know. How could she? Two self-conceptions struggled inside me: that of the educator, in the sense of he who protects and nurtures, and that of the traitor, he who hands something over, transmits knowledge. But what kind of knowledge was this anyway? The putrefied cadaver of the mother she’d never known? Selfishness won out: I wished to conserve for what little time I could my happy ballerina for the dead. Dancing for the memory of the dead. I said, it’s true, you’re right, we’ll find your mother’s grave. The next Sunday I took a box of colored ch
alk and wrote Eliana’s name and dates on the grave under which Armando, Dona Esther, and my father-in-law, Dom Estevão, lay buried. Lígia drew little flowers and hearts. On our next visit, the name was already washed off, so we decided to write it again with a piece of metal, etching it into the stone, Eliana Bastos Ferreira, 1945–1970. I was happy with our work, almost cheerful: child’s play, a foolish thing, and there was Eliana, with us.
Once, when Lígia was five or six years old, she brought a friend home. I proposed that we visit a museum or a park. I suggested Butantã, but Lígia wanted to show the cemetery to Francisca, who was excited to see it. I could tell it was something they’d been discussing for a while. Later, at the entrance, each one with her flowers, they took off running. Lígia stopped in front of certain graves and told her friend stories that I’d never heard. Princesses, Japanese ladies, and witches. The cemetery was her first library: each tomb a tome. The stories always ended with someone flying through the sky. And then she died and turned into a bird-person and flew away. Her mommy and daddy got sad, because regular people can’t feed bird-people, they can’t take them to school or put them to bed because they fly away and leave them. So they make graves for them and come here to talk, and the little bird-daughter tells them things that only she can see. Francisca was laughing, doubtful. But what about ghosts, aren’t you afraid of them? Or of the skeletons that come up from underground and wear dirty rags and walk like this, uuuuh, uuuuh! They’re underground, stuck right here, aren’t you afraid of dead people? Lígia laughed loudly, that’s dumb, it’s not true — and looked at me to confirm. The oldest meaning of educate is to pull up, to draw something out: a sword from its sheath (gladium e vagina educere), a child from the mother’s womb (educit obstetrix). The transformation of her laugh upon realizing my deep sadness. But I’m right here, Lígia, I’ll always be . . . my gaze tried to complete the thought, but she no longer saw me.
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